To stop three baby owls from becoming tame, a group of rescuers came up with a creative solution: a hand puppet called Super Mum.
As anyone who grew up on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show knows, puppets can provide endless entertainment to children and adults alike. But animal rescue workers at Hampshire, England’s Hawk Conservancy Trust came up with a novel and wonderful use for an owl hand puppet that had nothing to do with children: feeding orphaned owl chicks.
Two chicks and one egg were brought to the center recently, after their nest was inadvertently damaged by farmers. The egg hatched within days of arrival, and the three tawny owls were named Brownie, Woody, and Ivy. The tiny birds were all healthy—but the rescue center wouldn’t be able to release them into the wild if they fed them by hand.
“Owls imprint whatever they first see, this means if they see a human feeding them they will trust humans from that moment on,” Gale Gould of the Hawk Conservancy Trust told The Daily Mail. “These little owls are wild and we want them to remain wild - that’s why we created Super Mum.”
“Super Mum” is the Center’s name for their handmade owl puppet, which Center workers and volunteers use to feed the three baby birds. Super Mum has a pair of tweezers that sticks out of her nose, and the baby birds’ food is placed in the tweezers. For the babies, it’s very similar to how they would take food directly from the mother’s beak in the wild.
The babies will need to continue eating from the hand puppet for the next two months, but after that, they’ll be free to fly off and build their own nests, thanks to Super Mum and her friends.